Bunch of Mimosa 1945

Pierre Bonnard made this painting, Bunch of Mimosa, with oil on canvas, and wow, is it yellow! Bonnard lays down these vibrant marks, almost like he’s scribbling with color. The paint is thin, it's more like a stain, but there are so many layers that the whole surface vibrates. I can imagine him working on this, moving around the canvas, adding a little yellow here, a little green there, constantly adjusting and refining. He’s not just copying what he sees, but inventing a whole world of color and light. Look at how he uses these little strokes to build up the form of the flowers. It's as though the mimosa is almost dissolving into the atmosphere, blending with the background in a haze of yellow and green. Bonnard, like Vuillard, understood that painting is a conversation, a back-and-forth between the artist and the canvas, a way of making meaning through color and form.